Revelations from Iquitos (-Andrew)

We have a new favorite restaurant, on the recommendation of our lovely Hospedaje hosts. It’s named Hausai (apparently after a type of palm) and is the place where lots of local people go for lunch, so it’s always full (an excellent sign!). They have a different menu each day for an 8 sole lunch (about $3), with a choice of appetizers, main courses, and, most importantly, pitchers of juice!! We usually order completely different meal combinations in order to maximize our combined tasting potential. For example: Jess orders: appetizer- chicken tamale, main course- vegetable pie, juice- Guayaba, Andrew orders: appetizer- pork and giant corn soup, main course- fish with rice, juice- Tumbo. That makes 6 things to taste for a total of 5 dollars. It sure beats going to one of the ubiquitous Pollorias (1 choice- chicken with platanos or papas fritas) for dinner, although the big lunches definitely force an early afternoon siesta. We did find one good Pollería, called Pollos Panda, which is owned by the family of a friend of ours named Karina from the Language School. We met there for dinner on Saturday, along with Raquel and Rocio, and Jess got her first taste of Inka Cola- for those of you that are interested, there´s a new Peruvian restaurant near the Cary Mall where you can experience it for yourself! (The food there isn’t great though.)

After all our experimenting with food, taking siestas, and sitting around our hospedaje for several days, we felt a strong need to get our blood moving. So we asked our friends for recommendations for getting exercise, and found out that there are several little gyms tucked in between houses and stores. We decided to check Jully´s Spa, which is a very nice (albeit a little girly) facility with weight machines, a dance studio, and a small pool. Other than the usual awkwardness of being offered instructions by muscle-bound gym rats (compounded by language difficulties), and not realizing we were supposed to bring our own towels (it got a little oceanic), it went well and was quite rejuvenating. We´re hoping to make it a common occurrence. Jess is really excited about taking dance classes, mostly so she can take her moves to the Club (right.).

Speaking of which, we went to our first South American club on Saturday night (Jess made the mistake of mentioning to our friends that we were interested in learning to dance) and ended up about a block from our hostel at Club NOA (NOrte-Americanos?? No lOnger Audible?). It was not exactly traditional dancing- by which I mean once we got inside we could have been in any Americanized city in the world. There were lots of flashing lights, loud music with even louder base, TERRIBLE beer sold by scantily clad young women (our friends recognized a couple of their students from the Language Center), and only a few brave souls actually dancing. This was because it was only 10pm which is apparently way to early for respectable people to be at a Discoteca. Rocio dragged us onto the exposed dance floor and taught us a few moves (and seemed to be impressed that we could keep the beat... kind of... sometimes), while Karina cracked up every time she made eye contact with one of us. We ended up staying after midnight, after promising ourselves that we would get to bed early. But all in all, it was more fun than expected, and we learned a few moves to practice on our own, so next time we can really get down.